


The Bubble Wrap Cult

by AtlasofAnxiety



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bubble Wrap, Cuddles galore, Cuddling Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Dean Winchester is a clingy octopus and you cannot change my mind, Dean's got a history, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Just to be safe, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Protective Dean Winchester, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), angst and bubble wrap, implied suicidal ideation, john winchesters A+ parenting, podfic 12 minutes, selective mutism, vaguely mentioned implications, written by a person with selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29227503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlasofAnxiety/pseuds/AtlasofAnxiety
Summary: I promise it is not as angsty as the tags are.Dean's habits through the years as he heals, grows, and teaches his kind-of-husband and son some coping mechanisms. Sometimes the happy ending for a selectively mute character isn't when they start to talk again.Now has a podfic!3/6/21 some minor edits (mostly words that sounded better when read out loud or mistakes I found while reading) and I finally got around to making a podfic.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 113





	The Bubble Wrap Cult

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic is here. please forgive the rusty voice towards the end and inform me if there are any issues. It is on google drive because I am still rather unfamiliar with the internet.  
> 

[Podfic](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xy19dEPxb4-xbAY5pAextHL4XlysAeaU/view?usp=sharing)

There were some things Dean did that were infinitely annoying, even if Sam had gotten used to them, and understood them.

  
Dean never sat still. Dean flirted his way into situations and then panicked his way out of them. Dean never declared he and Cas were dating, leaving all onlookers in a state of confused limbo. Dean kept Secrets. Things that Cas understood, Jack knew, and Sam theorized. Things about John and having enough food for them to grow up on and the places they stayed and Dean’s silence.

  
Dean liked bubble wrap too goddamn much.

  
Dean had nervous tics. That was just Dean. Undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD that sprouted at a young age and filtered his relentless love for people into terror and long-denied tactile reassurance that he was just now getting—thank god for Cas. But it was still Dean, and sometimes Dean went to a place few could hear him speak from.

  
When the elder Winchester was younger he would sneak pieces of bubble wrap from… somewhere. He would sit in the corner, watching the door, watching John. Sam remembered how he always watched John as if at any moment a monster could crawl out of his skin and destroy them both, as if it had already happened. John would sleep, drunk and empty, and Dean would sit, eternally silent, a crumbling mountain that had been left in the elements to erode for far too long, in the corner popping bubble wrap with shaking hands and dead eyes. And Sam didn’t understand then, he just wanted to sleep. But Dean was silent and empty and didn’t see his ire.

  
And Dean grew. His hands no longer shook as he sat outside in ironic sunshine and fidgeted with calloused hands inked with his own blood. Sam grew enough to understand that he could hate the sound and let it be, let Dean have this one thing. At least Dean’s eyes were no longer quite as dead as he popped bubbles. Sam could work on his homework inside where John slept off the latest hunt. A hunt that had emptied Dean of his words and John of his patience. It was the day that Sam first connected the words “Anxiety” and “Mutism” and “PTSD” and knew why. (Even now they talked around the mutism as if calling it anything other than “the Silence” made it too real. Only Cas was allowed to acknowledge Dean’s anxiety, none of them felt the need to acknowledge the PTSD, even though they should, for Jack’s sake.)

  
The next week Dean found a roll of bubble wrap in his duffel, and in the quiet moments he sat outside and popped a square of it.

  
So Sam wasn’t surprised when his brother had brought an industrial roll of bubble wrap at the hardware store one day and hauled it into his room with his memory foam mattress. And when he heard the incessant popping he merely put his headphones on. He tried not to send any annoyance at Cas when Dean finally convinced him to "choose a room and stay in it damnit Cas," and proceeded to give him an entire roll of bubble wrap (that they both set to using almost immediately) and a memory foam mattress that Cas never used. And really Cas’s choice was pointed out several times by Dean, a room closer to his than Sam’s that somehow seemed to have a coat rack, it’s other furniture arranged in the most appealing way possible to compliment the scent of fresh Pine-Sol. But Sam kept his mouth shut and mind quiet.

  
When Jack came Dean had been too hurt and afraid, had walls even Sam could not scale so all he could do was watch his brother sink into the cold sea that had always been under his feet because the thin, cracked and reassembled glass he had come to rest on had been shattered yet again. Dean wanted to love. But…

  
But things got better. A few days before Cas came back a new mattress appeared in Jack’s bedroom, leaving the child bewildered, but hopeful. But no bubble wrap, if Sam had asked Dean would have told him about the first night, regret flickering in his empty eyes.

  
It had been one small step forward right before Dean decided to finally try to jump off a cliff. Sam would always wonder if it was a kindness or an attempt to rectify his treatment before he wouldn’t have the chance to. If he’d been so willing to die yet again… (always when he was without Cas, always when he had finally been getting better). He had been so vacant when he was finally breathing and Sam had _known_ to his core that if he couldn’t find something, _anything_ , soon he would lose Dean entirely. He could feel his brother’s soul like ashes slipping though his fingers.

  
And then Cas came back. And Dean decided not to move the few belongings Cas had left behind back into his room. He also decided that anything more than an hour apart was too much time, which the angel was impossibly patient about, considering that the first few days the time limit had been about 5 seconds.

  
He decided all of this as silently as he always did. Took Cas’s sleeve because hand holding was apparently too much despite snuggling the angel for an entire car ride and opened the “Cas drawer” and then hung their coats on the coat rack that had been in the corner for years. Then they sat next to each other and Sam took Jack out for ice cream. Because frankly the child was not even a few months old and really, really didn’t need to know what his fathers did when reunited. (Or what Sam thought they would do. Really, they spent the night curled up on Dean’s bed clinging to each other in tears, reassurance and silently reprised confessions of love.)

* * *

  
The hunt the four of them had been on had been… troublesome. But Sam couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was that made Deans words leave. No one new had been killed, no one familiar had almost been killed.

  
The hunt had been a simple salt and burn. A little girl this time, with a story she said only Dean would understand but never told. So now Cas was hovering while pretending he wasn’t hovering in the front seat beside Dean and Jack was getting more anxious than normal beside Sam in the back. But Sam didn’t know how to explain Dean’s silence, not with him sitting directly in front of them. Especially since it had been so common after Cas died and he’d been angry then. His world had shattered yet again and even though the glue was back in his hands he still needed time to fit the few pieces that hadn’t yet been ground to dust together again.

  
Jack hadn’t known Dean long enough to know the difference between empty, and angry and creeping silence that just coated Dean and cast a curtain over his soul. This was the sort of silence that Dean sank into like a comfortable blanket, eyes tired but not dead, not a void.

  
They pulled in and Jack rushed to help Dean unload. Dean, who had a tendency to avoid any form of help when he wasn’t as vulnerable as the silence left him, tried to shoulder everything until Cas glared at him and pulled a few bags from his shoulders. It was fitting.

  
Jack fell back, falling into step with Sam. “Did I mess up?”

  
Sam shook his head, “No, you did great. Dean’s not mad.”

  
“But—”

  
Sam smiled a little bit, “Sometimes Dean gets quiet. It’s okay. I'm going to take a shower.”

  
He patted Jack’s shoulder and meandered towards the dorms.

* * *

Jack was still frowning when Dean padded into the kitchen in his robe to look restlessly though the cupboards.

  
“Are you angry at me?” Jack stood, taking a few steps towards the man his father loved, his other dad, as he plunked a healthy slice of apple pie onto a plate.

  
Dean shook his head, reached out with the hand not occupied by pie and scruffed his kid’s hair with a fond smile. Then he flinched, his face twisted into a storm of emotion, set the pie on the table and swept Jack into a rib-crushing hug. When the hunter released him he held Jack by the shoulders, nodded with his entire body, the movement shaking Jack just a little and then walked out of the kitchen as if nothing had happened.

  
“Dean?” Jack tilted his head. It hadn’t been a prayer, it was more of a broadcast of warmth and overwhelming regret. Which was not uncommon for Dean, but not to this degree, not with the way his emotions shone so vibrantly against the silence, as if the desperation to communicate what the man truly felt had ignited them. Jack could sense his frustration and it felt vaguely like Dean wanted to hide and Dean never wanted to hide.

  
It felt a little too much like the time when the hunter had chased off a man who had been talking to him in a library, standing too close, somehow terrifying but horribly sweet and entirely normal, with the sort of righteous fury he normally reserved for demons. It felt like later that night when he gave Jack “the Talk” that wasn’t the one Sam gave him, hands on his shoulders and emotion flooding the room with a protective desperation that Jack had only seen in life and death situations. “You tell me. Right away,” Dean had said, “If anyone ever touches you, or even makes you uncomfortable you tell me and I will make sure it never happens again.” And in that moment Jack understood Dean’s wrath because in that moment he glimpsed into Dean’s memories and saw the man in the library with different faces, towering over them both in the dark.

  
Dean was quiet after that too.

  
It took all of three minutes for the Nephilim to follow after him. “Are you okay? Dean? Dean?”

  
“We’re in here, Jack.” Cas’s voice emanated from Dean’s mancave as he walked by and he stopped to peer inside. It was a place Dean had made specifically to have a quiet, non-bedroom space with Cas, going so far as to keep it a secret from Sam and then decided that it was better with family. There was a recliner that Jack, following Dean’s lead, never sat in properly (it had been a competition for a while, which one of them could sit the most incorrectly and frustrate Sam and Cas the most. Jack won when he realized his wings were strong enough to hold him in the air with no more effort than propping himself up with his arms required.) There was also a bright orange beanbag the Nephilim fell in love with at the store that had appeared shortly afterwards. It was his favorite chair because it wrapped around him like a hug and he could lean against his both his fathers’ legs. Not that they wouldn’t give him hugs if he asked for it, it was just nice sometimes to have only a little touch. Too much got overwhelming sometimes.

  
Dean had taken up residency on Cas’s side of the loveseat (they had annoyed Sam into buying it after complaining that the other party was nothing but sharp joints), pressed up against the angel with a huge square of lumpy plastic in his hand. Cas was sitting mostly sideways, leaning against the armrest so Dean could lean across his body and rest his head on the angel’s chest, also holding a giant sheet of lumpy plastic. In front of them a bowl of popcorn rested on a roll of it, which Dean tore a piece off of, holding it out to Jack with the same energy he offered the last slice of pie a week ago. He was broadcasting again. Warmth and invitation, the desire for his family to be in arm’s reach.

  
Sam had said Dean got quiet sometimes.

  
Jack took the plastic with a small frown and settled on the unused half of the loveseat, trying to watch the old cartoon marathon his dads were watching and his dads at the same time, clutching the plastic gingerly, until a quiet pop! sounded off from the side. He whipped his head around to stare wide-eyed at Dean, who was holding the plastic, staring straight into his son’s eyes with a smirk like it was a challenge. He popped another bubble.

  
Cas was doing his damned best not to laugh as Jack frowned and stared at his sheet. He carefully pressed on a bubble, increasing pressure cautiously until it deflated with a pitiful wheeze. Dean huffed a laugh and then adjusted his hands so Jack could see what he was doing better and popped a bubble with a quick movement. Jack copied it and was rewarded with a pop! and Dean grinned, looked up at Cas, who grinned back, and somehow grinned even more.

  
Sam came in a few minutes later to a cacophony of bubble wrap and three heads turning in sync to stare at him in a way that reminded him of a bunch of baby owls watching their mother swoop in after a hunt. He settled in a recliner (resolutely trying not to think about how his brother had gotten them for free somewhere because it was Dean after all, and Dean was nothing if not a clean freak) and watched Dean corrupt his son with the annoying, calming wonders of bubble wrap.

  
Dean was quiet sometimes and it was okay. His eyes were no longer dead and empty and that was all that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Mary's on a hunt somewhere (Because I did not forget she existed, not at all) I have not seen season 15 and likely never will. (I have reasons. They are very reasonable reasons, please do not give me any spoilers)  
> This was written over the course of 3 nights, around 3-4 am during some bad times. I just needed character arcs and fluff. I used my own experiences of selective mutism (because PTSD is a BASTARD).  
> I didn't have Dean talk in the end because that's not how it works. being able to talk is not (le gasp) the be all end all, being okay with not talking and being with people who have learned or have made an effort to understand you not talking is.  
> Dean is a tactile person, which is one of the things about mutism-- even when you can talk its a lot of effort and it's really hard to communicate some topics out loud. It's easier to show love in other means which I wish that had been shown more (and that CW wasn't such a scaredy cat. But I'm making a full series of how many things would be better on that subject so I digress.)  
> Silence can be comfortable. It can be frustrating, but it's peaceful, it's not a tragedy, or something that needs to be corrected. And it does freak people out a little at first, but they need to learn that silence isn't a strike against them.  
> Jack has anxiety, which I wanted to talk about as well. It's okay to ask if someone is mad, and do so directly.  
> I will probably record a podfic of this at some point, late at night when no one in my apartment/dorm can hear me (or be noisy). I will also expand on this idea in the longer fic in the aforementioned series.


End file.
